Cost of financing a city campaign

Historic City News always checks the financial reports filed by political candidates, at least the ones who successfully make it to the General Elections. A standard metric for campaign managers is their budget for each vote. We took a look at the preliminary numbers which will adjust slightly when the campaigns file their final report.

What can we learn from this data? Often you can closely predict whether or not the candidate will be a spendthrift in office, or a miser. The total dollar amount raised gives you some idea of their capacity to win the support of others; however, grassroots support, not measured in dollars, is more telling about popularity. Both are important.

Here are the figures we took from the Supervisor of Elections website regarding the three city elections.

Candidate	Votes	Money	Cash Raised	Cost per Vote
Joe Boles	48.85%	67.7%	$36,111.69	$14.26
Nancy Shaver	51.15%	32.3%	$17,224.00	$6.50
Todd D. Neville	55.09%	78.0%	$43,145.00	$15.86
John Valdes	44.91%	22.0%	$12,155.00	$5.48
Grant Misterly	41.49%	60.5%	$14,832.29	$7.27
Nancy Sikes-Kline	58.51%	39.5%	$9,675.00	$3.36